wheat grass... any science to this fad?

The health food/nutritional supplement industry is probably the most visible day-to-day example of rampant pseudoscience. Please, do this and report back to us.To DynamicGreens: The honest answers you've been giving are much to your credit, but I think you're only giving them because you seem completely unaware of how well they epitomize pseudoscience. A team of us here at EvC Forum could, with little effort, design an equally worthless product and a website to sell it, and in no time we'd be raking in the dough - in fact, maybe we'd use your company as a supplier, if relabeling agreements is something you do.Your company is selling the product because it makes money, not because there's evidence it works and you just want to help people. The average person is easy pickins for flim-flam. Con-artists see the general population as a big reservoir of money to be tapped, and your company is just feeding at the trough.Just so you know why what you're doing is pseudoscience, let me briefly outline the scientific approach. In order, you should follow these two simple steps:

1. Establish the effects of your product through scientific double-blind studies.
   ​
2. Base your marketing campaign upon the positive scientific results, if any, while carefully noting any detrimental possibilities.

--Percy

When you make scientific claims without scientific foundation, you're committing pseudoscience. For instance, Dr. Chris Reynolds, your president, I presume, says: Your website is full of claims like this, that the positive health effects of wheatgrass have been scientifically established. Where's the science?Going to your Selection of 27 Summaries... page, we see there are only two studies actually done on wheatgrass. The one by Ben-Arye, et. al., studied it as a treatment for active distal ulcerative colitis in humans. The other by B. Peryt et. al. studied a wheat sprout extract (not wheatgrass) in rats.Many of the other studies focused on grass juice or extracts, or on chlorophyll, which Dr. Chris Reynolds himself claims cannot be a significant factor since your wheatgrass product contains almost no chlorophyll.Pseudoscience websites attempt to give the impression of scientific support when in fact little to none actually exists. Your website employs this tactic to a large extent and so qualifies as a pseudoscience website.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

From the thread Why are there no scientific studies on the benefits of wheatgrass?: I'd respond, "Yes, we know you've chosen the latter, probably the most common approach of pseudoscientific health food marketing. Why does your website work hard at giving the impression that you've chosen the former, i.e., science, when you haven't?"In other words, the issue isn't that they're not doing science. The issue is the effort they exert to make people think they're doing science.This is all just shoveling sand into the ocean, though. Hospitals are now offering bogus treatments like therapeutic touch and aroma therapy, arguing that they should offer what their client-base wants, and I assume just wanting to get a slice of the pie. Legitimate drug companies are now some of the largest marketers of nutritional supplements and vitamins - it's an easy source of revenue, isn't subject to almost any testing requirements, and there are all kinds of stylistic ways to avoid the rules covering what health claims can be made.The FDA can only regulate what congress provides them a mandate for, and the AMA is very gunshy of tackling bogus health claims as a result of past legal entanglements. The American public are just lambs begging to be fleeced.--Percy

See Message 7 of the Why are there no scientific studies on the benefits of wheatgrass? thread.Good God, Derek's like a broken record. He seems to think the issue is whether or not wheatgrass works (whatever "works" means). That isn't the issue at all. We're not disputing whether wheatgrass works. I'm sure we both have our opinions (likely very similar), but they're beside the point.What Derek can't seem to wrap his brain around is that they're making every effort to give the appearance of science without actually doing any science. They're misrepresenting the nature of the actual scientific support of their claims for their product, which places their product claims firmly in the realm of pseudoscience.There (shoveling another shovelful of sand), take that, ocean! --Percy

Hi Derek,You seem to be missing the nature of the objection. It isn't a question of whether wheatgrass juice works or not. The issue is that your website goes to great lengths to give the impression that the benefits of wheatgrass juice have been scientifically established when they have not.Now allow me to address some specifics: Disapproved is a euphemism for deleted, I see. You quoted this claim from one of the deleted messages: Well, I guess Nator was wrong about that, because you not only touched the message, you obliterated it. Just as Nator predicted back in Message 55 of this thread: Nator was pretty much spot on, wasn't she.Here at EvC Forum we never delete messages because we're open and honest. The software is carefully designed so that if a message *is* ever deleted, that fact can't be hidden because the missing message numbers don't go away. But you use vBulletin, and when messages are deleted at vBulletin they go away completely leaving not so much as a ripple on the placid surface. This is one of the few responses left open to those caught in a lie for which there is no defense, isn't it: "I don't like your tone."And no one was trying to discredit you, unless by discredit you mean tell the truth about you. Calling attention to this isn't discrediting you, it's just pointing out to those with little scientific background how you're discrediting yourself. You're making scientific claims that aren't true, right? And Nator pointed that out, right? And you ignored her point, right? Then when she became more insistent you deleted her messages, right?The "tone" you object to would never have happened if you had responded forthrightly, but you ignored the expressed concerns about your website's claims of scientific support for the benefits of wheatgrass and instead responded with marketing, personal anecdotes and testimonials.So when you to on to say: How do we know there were no other posts, Derek? Your bulletin board leaves no indication about deleted messages, so how do we know you didn't delete other messages? All we have is your word, the word of Mr. DeleteItIfIDoNotLikeIt, right?To your credit, you're a lot more honest here than you are at your website, but there's a good reason for that. Your website is a marketing tool for selling a product. To that end it uses misrepresentation, which you freely admit when you say things like, "It is just a statement and definitely pseudoscience."But that's not the impression your website leaves in people's minds, is it, Derek? Your website gives the impression to people unfamiliar with science, which is most people, that the benefits of wheatgrass juice have been scientifically established when they have not. In essence, you're lying to sell a product, make a buck.Wheatgrass juice is your livelihood and your company's livelihood, so I don't blame you at all for deleting messages and doing whatever else is necessary to continue the fiction, but let's not kid ourselves about what you're doing, okay? And the next time you come to a science board and post nonsense, don't be surprised when you're called on it.Oh, and a brief suggestion: when you delete messages, post a note that you've done so. You'll sleep better at night.--Percy

You're just not going to address the fact that you're lying to the public, are you? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the longer you put off addressing this issue, which we originally introduced in very polite terms, the more blunt we're going to become.Look, Derek, the whole health food/nutritional supplement industry is mostly a scam, and your company with it's touting of wheatgrass as beneficial for a whole host of maladies for which there's no scientific evidence is in it up to its neck. Your objection to being called on this appears to be, "I don't like your tone and you're not being very nice."One of the most horrible and egregious effects of your industry is to cause people to think they're addressing problems when they're not. I don't know what Nator said specifically in the message you deleted, but the message she was replying to was prime evidence that the mere presence of the bunk promoted by your industry causes people to delay or forgo seeking treatment for truly serious diseases, cancer and heart disease certainly among them. It's despicable.--Percy

Let's start with this: Well, let's take a look at your disclaimer: Gee, Derek, your disclaimer reads just like any standard legal disclaimer intended to disavow any responsibility for what happens to anyone who actually uses the information you provide. Ever see a disclaimer like this attached to any prescription medicine you get that's been through traditional double-blind studies and approved by the FDA? I don't think so.But the main problem is that your disclaimer is at great odds with the rest of your website which makes many confident claims regarding the benefits of wheatgrass juice. Opinion? Where does it say at your website anywhere besides your disclaimer that you're only giving your opinion? Your uninformed, unscientific opinion at that, just as you state in your disclaimer. I'm looking at this webpage right now: Here's a few excerpts, you let me know which of them are stated as if they were only an opinion: Dr. Chiu-Nan Lai is the founder of Lapis Lazuli Light, whose "objective is to promote Dr. Lai's 'Body, Mind and Spirit' Total Health concept to all levels of society." And Ann Wigmore, deceased as of 1994, has a website at Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute | Living Foods Lifestyle that says, "the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute is to promote self-healing through the Living Foods Lifestyle®."And get a load of this about cancer: Your website is actually encouraging victims of cancer to seek alternatives outside traditional medicine! What could be more horrific?Your website is full of all the false claims of your industry, like these from you page of Wigmore's claims: Wow, wheatgrass juice can do all that! People might want to have a look at this Wheatgrass Madness webpage for information that is actually true.The problem with your website, Derek, as we've been telling you over and over and over and as you've been ignoring and ignoring and ignoring, is that you're taking advantage of people unfamiliar with science by making it appear to them that there is scientific support for your health claims about wheatgrass juice when there is little to none.Oh, and about this from your previous message: So what you're really upset about is that when you came here and made bogus claims, people called you on them. You would like to rely upon politeness to keep people from calling attention to your misrepresentations. In your view of morality is it evidently worse to call attention to a misrepresentation than to make one.We do have a set of Forum Guidelines here at EvC Forum, and one of them is this one:

4. Points should be supported with evidence and/or reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions.

So go ahead, Derek, follow our Forum Guidelines and support the claims about wheatgrass juice enhancing oxygen transport, increasing red blood cell count, preventing tooth decay, allowing flow of lymphatic fluid, and all the rest.A lot of mumbo-jumbo, Derek, and no research.--Percy

Hi Derek,I was reading the early posts in this thread and have discovered that it's a font of information about wheatgrass juice. I was particularly taken by the details about Ann Wigmore, so since you devote an entire pate at your website to Wigmore's claims, let's examine Ms. Wigmore a bit.The story of Ann Wigmore is at so many websites that I'm not going to cite any - they all contain nearly identical text. Just type "wigmore massachusetts wheatgrass attorney general" into Google and you'll get lots of hits. My information comes from this.Wigmore was not a medical doctor. She never had any medical training, and she never did any medical research. She claimed to have a Doctor of Divinity degree from the College of Divine Metaphysics in Indianapolis. She believed in astrology, and her wheatgrass claims were based upon the Biblical tale of Nebuchadnezzar recovering from insanity by eating grass for several years.Given that scientific studies are the only way to verify such claims, and given that no such studies have ever been done, and given that Wigmore's claims give the appearance of being scientific and thus communicate a false impression about the scientific support for wheatgrass juice health claims, shouldn't your webpage of Wigmore's claims (More Potential Benefits From Wheatgrass Juice) be removed?--Percy

Whoa! New research!I just got back from vacation and am catching up, I'll take a more detailed look later.--Percy

I read the new citations, but I've run out of time for any more than that.It was Derek's repetitive marketing-style posts that ignored our points with an almost zombie-like persistence that originally got me going. I've calmed down now. There are a million flim-flam men out there and only one of me.--Percy